Our History

Manchuria and Our History

The Qing Dynasty (Chinese: 清朝), also known as the Great Qing or Manchu Dynasty, was the last imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912, with a brief restoration in 1917. It was founded by the Jurchen Aisin Gioro clan of Manchuria which led an uprising against the ruling Ming Dynasty. In 1644, the Ming capital of Beijing was conquered, although it took until 1683 to complete the conquest of the whole Ming Empire. Qing power reached its zenith with the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (1735 – 1796). However, this was not to last and decline set in at the dawn of the nineteenth century. The empire suffered a major blow at hands of the UK, France and the USA during the Opium Wars (1839 – 1842 and 1856 – 1860) and made great sacrifices in quelling the Taiping Rebellion (1850 – 1864). The Qing then lost to Japan in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895. Further alienation between the hard-line Manchu elite and the rising pro-reform factions pushed the Qing Empire into complete chaos by 1911, sparking the Xinhai Revolution which established the Republic of China.

Manchuria (simplified Chinese: 满洲; traditional Chinese: 滿洲; pinyin: Mǎnzhōu) is a modern name given to a large geographic region in Northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is now usually referred to as Northeast China (simplified Chinese: 东北; traditional Chinese: 東北; pinyin: Dōngběi) in China, although “Manchuria” is widely used outside of China to denote the geographical and historical region. This region is the traditional homeland of the Xianbei, Khitan, and Jurchen (later called Manchus, after whom Manchuria is named) peoples, who built several states historically.